The Demon Hunter of Woodberry
by BumbleLellie
Summary: Daryl had everything, he had his wife and his infant daughter. They were safe, and everything was going to be totally fine. But everything he had was ripped from him, he was thrown aside and left for dead. Only he didn't die, he came back and he was going to do anything in his power to get revenge.
1. Chapter 1

_**So backstory time guys, I was in school the other week and actually revising in a free with my friend (who I usually just fan-girl about TWD with), my headphones were in and the Sweeney Todd sound track was on. Then I was like ''omfg imagine TWD-version''. And then I realised it worked too well in my head and I really, really tried to resist writing it, I was telling my daddy everything hoping it would unlodge but that's all that came to head when trying to write today. Xxx **_

Zach had travelled the south, first with his family in the old world all those years ago. Beheld the wonders of the American south in its final glory days. He barely remembered it though, but the tales given to him by his family made him feel part of the old world. He was born there, but he was bred here. He wanted to see the world. Walkers and hunger weren't abnormal for him, he grew up knowing to run, knowing to fight. Anyone left could tell you the same.

In some crazed adolescent dream, the dreams of a lonely orphan he had left his camp in hope to extend his knowledge of the country, see if it really was the same past the green-leafed home of Georgia. It had been. Disheartened he had set himself back, planned to return to the leafy suburbs of Atlanta, the city that he knew. Along the way a group of rough tag-a-longs, bikers in the old world, asked him to join. Joe let him in, showed him the ropes and he helped them travel the world to behold its wonders. From the abandoned monuments and the mountainous homes of survivor communities. They traded and made friends, somehow in their roughness providing help places need exterminating surmounting pressure from walkers or other groups. They'd do the dirty work no issue. But there was no place like Georgia.

He and another man, the quiet bowman were left. Given a rucksack and dropped off as members sometimes do, waving them down the road, he stared apprehensively at the silent man. He knew enough to know his name, to have said thank you for a few meals. But that was all that was ever said to him, by anyone. The man liked his space, or perhaps just didn't like the company. It didn't matter much, most the men spoke enough to make up for the silence.

''No, there's no place like Georgia.'' The man's voice was gruff, loud and unreadable in its tone. He seemed to be answering his own thoughts, but somehow mixed in Zach's along with it. Zach was happy to be back, the place seemed somehow homely though it was identical to everywhere else.

''Mr Dixon?'' he looked up apprehensively, giving a small smile. The man grunted, taking off into the woods.

He had nothing else to do, nowhere to go now he was back. Perhaps that was the issue, but the man seemed to know where he was headed. Zach spoke about things, unable to stand the silence with the man who never spoke. He told him about his dreams, how he wanted to travel. And now, that he was back in Georgia he wanted it all- to find another survivor, a female one. And they'd fall in love and settle down. He couldn't wait.

Dixon broke the silence.

''You are young. Life has been kind to you. You will learn.'' The words were simple, they strung out into the air beneath the heavy southern accent. A voice of misuse and terrible knowledge far surmounting his years. He set up a camp for them, expertly making a fire and taking a day-old rabbit out his pack tossing it at the flaxen haired youth. How he despised that colour.

Sitting back against the tree with the hunting knife in hand, Daryl took first watch. He knew he wasn't going to sleep, but the boy was going to need to. And the boy, as insanely naïve as he was, he would provide a little cover, an alibi to stop them looking too closely. And they'd never find out, not until the job was done.

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it, and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit, and it goes by the name of Woodberry.

At the top of the hole sit the privileged few, making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo, turning beauty to filth and greed-

He too had travelled this hell form crevice to corner, overturning every stone and leaf to make his way back to sanity. To make his way back here. And it was finally happening. The wonders of this life for him weren't great, the cruelty of every group and the own world for making the dead somnambulists who only want to devour. But no place was crueller than Woodberry.

''Is everything alright, Mr Todd?'' The boy's voice startled him, an achievement in itself. He realised that he must have moved or made some disgruntled noise in his thoughts.

He was so close, he could almost taste it. The shadows of the building could be from these very trees, soon the streets they walked down would be back under his feet. He was raised in the woods of this state, lived off them as a child. And now they welcomed him home, concealed him and led him in their familiarity to the dark crevices of his past.

Zach willingly took over watch, eager in his youth to provide help. So Daryl let him, why take the brunt of it all. He should rest himself, get as much sleep as possible so he can relish the next day or so.

There was a hunter and his wife and she was beautiful. He dreamt of her soft blonde curls on his chest, she would use him as a glorified pillow and he would smiling pretend that he cared. Her big blue eyes would bore into him in the mornings, matching where he had stayed to stare at her sleeping. And she'd smile, the light of it making her cheeks rosy and lips seem all too delectable. And they were safe, she was safe. And for a while he believed, he truly believed, that nothing would go wrong. Not at all, they were safe here. A foolish hunter and his wife.

A long time ago he was a man with no meaning. He thrived and survived to dodge the pain that he world had inflicted on him. A father who beat him. A brother who abandoned him. And there was nothing, no motivation behind any of it. Before he had rolled up to that damn farm, and he had met her. He thought nothing of it- inexplicably ending up sat with her in the now empty barn staring at where her mama had been and the girl he lost had been too. They didn't speak, not for the first few days, and then a week later he was the first person she spoke to. He tried not to stare at her bandaged wrists, wishing he was brave enough to have taken that initiative years ago. There was no point now, he had suffered long enough for it to be normal.

They taught each other to smile again, and she even clumsily taught him to dance. The farm fell to flames and death. And when they ran he ended up unknowingly keeping an eye on her, fighting the disapproving gaze of her father. But she didn't care. And so how could he possibly?

An unexpected herd wiped most of them out, killed Lori and Herschel some others too. Barely any of them survived, but she had- and for some reason that's the only someone he wanted to survive. She became his reason and his life. His introspective world had been breached, he knew it then. And he knew it at her first kiss. The first time they made love, and every time after. When they found the sanctuary of the village walls they thought they found everything.

And she was beautiful, small frame and that doe-eyed face. She was an angel amongst the death, part of everything yet somehow apart from it all. Her upbringing had sheltered her from men like him, rough and unlovable. But she had found a way, upheld her virtue so he couldn't see it for less value than what it was, what a value she was.

And he had been so fucking naïve to think that he could have her. To have them.

Sometimes his mind couldn't help but go back to those years, the early ones before the tensions began, before it all fell out of place. And he was happy, happy with her. He'd hold her swollen belly and leave small kisses on her neck, before he went hunting. And when he came back she'd be in their kitchen, wearing the gentle powder blue sweater she loved so much and nursing a small mug of tea. If only he had known someone else was watching.

He never saw the man as a threat. Would never have thought that the hospitality shown was going to backfire so completely in his face, but it did. The governor. He was a man with two faces, one for public viewing and the darker real man underneath. He was another man who saw her for what she was, how beautiful she was both inside and out. How could he not, it radiated from her. It didn't take anything for him to make the orders, denounce him in the street as a murderer and have him beaten. Through closing eyes he saw her tearful face, hands clasped round their baby girl as he was dragged out.

They left him west of Arizona. Left for dead. And he didn't care if he died. But the jealousy of living whilst knowing she was too susceptible to him. Would Beth know he hadn't murdered that man? She may doubt it, but what was that- her heart was too good to suspect he had been set up. He'd swoop it, and she'd fall.

Beth Greene was so soft, so young, so lost and oh, so beautiful.

But he'd come back, hadn't stop fighting all these years to battle off his own depression and find safe enough means to travel. Perhaps the isolation he imposed made him mad, or perhaps the smile the man had given him as he was dragged off for dead finally did him in. either way he was here, and he would have revenge.

His eyes opened to the soft morning light under a faded canopy, he rolled over grabbed his hunting knife and woke the boy. It was time to go, it was time to meet Woodberry.

_**I would really really like to know what you think! xxx**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**I'm doing chapters by the songs, so this is a small chapter since it's a song about pies….and I don't think I can do much with that…..**_

He left Zach somewhere amongst being entered and allowed into Woodbury. With nowhere else to go he headed back home, the place that was theirs. Somehow the streets that lined the still familiar walk seemed dirtier and darker, perhaps it was the time or the apocalypse, or even the fact he was too apprehensive to where it would lead.

The place had expanded, the walls living up to years upon years of growth and survival. But it had lost the magic for him, the day he lost this place he saw it for what it really was. Daryl looked up at his house, his old house.

Somewhere along the way it was converted. The gentle yellow colour, Beth had loved so much had been scrubbed off by the elements and replaced with a dingy smoke colour. The large windows transformed for a shop front, as the economy was recreated and houses moved to the edges of Woodbury instead. Before the apocalypse it had been a shop, but after it was Beth's ideal living room- the large windows beaming in light like they now held grime. It had been changed back to the original purpose, some sort of food stall so he entered grimly.

He wished inside they would be blanket covered furniture and stolen possessions of the dead so that the expanding existence in her stomach could pretend to grow up in the same world she had. He wanted the dried bushes of wild herbs and flowers to be hung up still on the old styled beams so that they'd tickle his head and been crushed up for rudimentary medicines when she was ill. This was the place his baby girl had been born, the very love of his life was made and he believed for the first time that life might not be as bad as he was brought up to believe it was going to be.

And now it was gone.

It was empty, cold and smelt of damp. Any hope Beth might still be here was gone, she wouldn't live with her home being so filthy- she hadn't been raised that way. The mismatched furniture was all empty, mostly containing an abnormal amount of grimy dust that seemed to cling to this whole...'sanctuary'.

A lone woman looked up from a stupored day dream as he walked in, her eyes flashing brilliantly and leaping, quite literally, at him. She had grabbed his bag before he knew it, thrown it near a chair furthest from the door and politely offered it to him with a sickening smile. He sighed, deciding there was nothing else at all that he could do here, maybe start looking for answers.

The woman was small framed, her short cropped hair was already the colour of silver and the tattered clothes much worse than the others he had seen.

''A customer!'' It had been so long since he had heard a woman's voice, any woman and the light femininity of it was almost enough to distract him form how shocked she seemed to be that anyone was here at all. ''You gave me such a fright, I thought you was a ghost!

She thought about how many weeks it had been since anyone came to stop by, at this rate there was no chance at all of surviving and the Governor didn't take kindly to those unable to hold their own weight. But I wasn't her fault, a sole woman and this huge space with completion sprouting up as the walkers became less and less with each year- impossible.

Company was scarce and so she was rambling on, dusting off the table and offering a yellowing glass of water to him- he nodded at her and ignored it entirely- she didn't blame him.

''Did you come here for a pie, sir? Do forgive me if me head's a little vague—but no one comes in even to inhale. These are probably the worst pies in Woodbury-'' she hadn't realised her thoughts were being prattled out loud, and somehow Dixon thought perhaps this was why there was stunning lack of customers around. Great advertising.

''And no wonder with the price of meat, what it is - when you get it. Never thought I'd live to see the day, men'd think it was a treat findin' poor animals dyin' in the street.'' She brushed her hands off on an apron that couldn't be promised to make her hands anything but dirtier still.

She brought over a small side plate laden with the pastry treat promised on the sign outside, the one he hadn't paid any attention to because he was there hoping there was a semblance of a chance his wife and child might still be here. The prickling behind his ears and burning in his head betrayed him, he shook his head to dislodge the thoughts and turned to the cook who gestured at the plate with a bemused look on her face.

Daryl took a bite of the greying pastry, his mind trying not to think of what could possibly be in there. He had eaten worse- he must have. His teeth sunk into the thick rawness of dough and cooling gristly meat. Coming back hoping for a sunshine-haired cook's meal seemed almost laughable in comparison to this. His face dropped and his mind only raced with where he was supposed to spit this food out, or worse if he was expected to swallow it.

The woman seemed to know this, almost surprised that he took a bite. He must be new around here, or the dare money was really, really worth it. She patted his back awkwardly, grabbing a strong arm and pulling him to the back of the shop. A stiff drink would do it, gin or something like that to get the taste away. It was the least she could do.

''Carol Pelletier, my dear- and you are?''


	3. Chapter 3

**_Woo! Ok guys my fun story is being updated (yes, this is what I count as hilarious) xxx_**

Carol led him to the back of her small shop. The musky smell of the peeling gaudy paper was disguised palely with some form of herby incense that immediately settled into a headache. He missed the woods, the days traveling around nature that somehow eluded his anger to quiet compliance of being a member of a band of crooks. After all he was no better.

She smiled widely, pouring him a generous helping of clear liquid, the smell told him it was moonshine. His gut twisted, the thought of a yellow haired and pink cheeked Beth flooding into his head. The paper on the wall looked so grim and grimy, and squinting through the alcohol in the grimy glass he could almost pretend that he was back in here with her delightedly talking about how they had the same pattern at her farm when she grew up. Sad to see the ugly paper wasn't being cared for, the damp and mildew obviously fighting its already overbearing pattern.

He found his eyes trailing across the room, removing the furniture and belongings of the short grey haired woman in order to recreate their home. His gut twisted, as he trailed to the large mahogany door that led to the upstairs. It was locked, obviously unused with dust and even a cabinet in front of it. The outside entrance had looked even less used, the rickety steps nearly eaten away with age. The woman, carol, followed his gaze.

''I wouldn't think about going up there, dear. See something happened up there, something not very nice.''

''Walkers?'' his voice was detached, knowing there was nothing in the story to do with the old problems of walkers. How they had plagued them when they were new and undealable.

The woman shook he head, cheeks colouring with the morbid thoughts of gossiping with a new neighbour. That's why he hated people. They were sadistic and selfish, not one of them was worth their pitiful lives. No one but her.

**_There was a hunter and his wife, and he was beautiful. Entered this place a decade hence with this other group of people, bedraggled from a farm and headed from the Georgia direction. About a dozen or so of them, said they were harmless and soon made this place their home. But he, he wasn't like the others. No, he was far more elite could go out at dawn and be back by supper with a full hoard to feed most of the town. A proper artist he was, respected and crucial to most mission and sourcing for supplies. We trusted him- but he was thrown out for crime not even a year later. _**

''Daryl his name was, Daryl Dixon.'' She sighed looking across at the room with a sad interest on her face.

''what was his crime?'' oh, the irony. He of all people knew this sort, but her remembrance had jarred him with such agonising sadness he could barely choke out what he presumed to be a non-interested question.

''foolishness.'' After so many years trying to name his agonising torment, he was shocked to the bone to hear it finally labelled. Yes, it was his nativity. It was all his fault.

**_He had this wife, you see. Pretty little thing, one of those young girls with long blonde hair and eyes like glass. She had her whole life ahead of her when the outbreak happened and after that it was transferred to her love for him. You could see it, you know? Don't get that kind of love often, but every look she gave him was of devotion. Silly little thing she was. All smiles and patience but nothing to back it up, without him she couldn't protect herself from a fly. Had her chance though, for everything you could ever want. But she wouldn't take it- not right, to have only devotion. Poor thing. _**

**_There was this governor you see wanted her like mad. I except he wasn't right in the head after he lost his own wife and daughter, easy to get jealous isn't it? And I mean she was the perfect kind of woman, rare because most like her were the first to be turned. The kind that stay to long after you die because they want to mourn and cry for your waste life. He needed someone like that, with the painful bereavement and all. Even after it became obvious he husband wasn't coming back she was still full of gentle nativity, a greater sadness too. Every day was asking for news of him, wondering if the rumours are true. Go straight to his claws, didn't she? Asking the governor himself why her husband was gone, don't think he ever answered her- not directly at least. He gave her flowers and wooed her with simple lost things dresses and stolen jewellery. She didn't care, never cared for any of it. She just sulked, and slept then sulked some more. Poor thing, she should have said yes when it was a choice. _**

**_The doctor called on her all polite, Milton his name was, but we all know him by his close affiliation with the governor. He told her she was depressed and that social gatherings would do her a world of good, and who was she to refuse a doctor? If only she would've seen the rouse like the rest of us. She listened to the muttering stories of the guilt the governor bore, how upset he was for her and how he blamed himself for letting her be around a murderer for so long. My husband wasn't a murderer, she told him, but he wouldn't listen._**

**_This was when I lastly met her for the only real time. Her pale face knocking on my door, I had a trade post for dresses back then still working under my husband. Needed a dress she said, had the little one on her hip like a shield against the world. Kid looked so much like her it was eerie, blonde hair and big blue eyes twice on you makes you give up the best you have. Got a beating for letting that blue floral dress go for so little, but god did she look like the real thing. If it weren't all shit I might believe she were sent from heaven itself. So small and young though, snapped right back to youthfulness it was impossible to think that she had arrived here seven months gone. _**

**_It was unfair really, from what I heard. No one told her the gathering was a masked ball, and how was she meant to know that? Couldn't figure out where she was going or who she should talk to, little thing spooked so easily. There she was asking for him, for the governor. Wanted to leave or perhaps to ask more questions. Nobody knows but everyone knows how the cava was thrust into her hand and the waste-not-want-not was so instilled into her she drank it. Obviously not used to alcohol, with her age and a child of her own to carry and feed to boot- let's say it went too quickly to her head. _**

**_The governor of course found her when he was well enough intoxicated, lead her away from the dance floor to a nice secluded corner. I have to hand it to her, she hit and struggled against him as soon as she saw what he was going to do. But really, what force was she against him? So he laughed, and they laughed as he- well he-_**

''No!'' Daryl stood up, clutching his head against the image of a tear filled Beth and that man. His throat burned form the outbreak, his feet pacing because he wanted to tear himself apart.

''would no one have mercy on her?'' there his voice was small again, tears threatening to spill over his cheeks to the floor. It was incomprehensible that he could possibly have come back after all this time to only find that she had succumbed, albeit unwillingly, to that man. Perhaps childishly he had hoped that nothing could have transpired past where he left and when he returned there'd be a wife and a baby with open arms.

''Where is she now?'' His voice still wavered, hating to ask anything more, particularly after only the small shake of a head at his last question.

''Poisoned herself, arsenic from round the corner.'' There was a pause between them. The world crashed around him once again, his feet stumbled and he barely caught himself on the arm of a chair. Gasping breaths coming out of his mouth, he wanted to heave and be sick. The very thought-

''And where's she? Where's Johanna?'' he was frantic, nearing on hysterical with a mad kind of silence. He found the panic turn him slowly to stone and each passing second made him more and more full of vengeance and collected assassination ideas.

''The governor has her.''

And that settled it for him, the governor was going to die and it was going to be painful and slow.

''So it is you Daryl Dixon.'' Carol stood up, inspecting his scruffy face and greying hair with a bemused smug expression. Part of him wanted to hit her for making his pain her entertainment, but she was in on the secret now, and besides he needed someone who knew the inner workings of this place to plot his next moves.

''No, not Dixon. That man is dead. It's Trott now, Herschel Trott. And he will have his revenge.''

**_Do tell me your thoughts! xxx_**


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